MOULTRIE, Ga. — With the Moultrie Police Department prepared to fill the top position of a city-county drug task force, the unit looks to be taking the shape of a true cooperative effort.

The police department is in the process of hiring a lieutenant who will take charge of the Drug Enforcement Team, Moultrie Interim Police Chief Sean Ladson said during a Tuesday interview. This comes just over a month before a police investigator was assigned to the unit.

The two agencies have not yet signed a contract, but their leaders say that is a formality at this point.

“The city-county drug unit is back together,” Colquitt County Sheriff Rod Howell said. “We’ve finally gotten over the hump where he (Ladson) can provide the two agents that have long been requested.”

Howell and Ladson, who worked together on the drug unit for several years previously, have said that beefing up the numbers will help make more drug cases. Ladson was in charge of the Drug Enforcement Team before being named as interim chief in the summer of 2017.

About four years ago the police department pulled the last of its officers from the former drug unit.

Prior to that the city and county previously had cooperated in at least three contractual arrangements since 1979, and at one time the lieutenant in charge of the joint unit was a Moultrie officer.

“It could have been a county position or a city position,” Ladson said. “Right now we have the hiring capabilities for the lieutenant’s position. We’re moving forward. It’s going to help tremendously.”

The two agencies previously had announced plans to have police officers serve on the sheriff’s office’s Tactical Response Unit, which is tasked with handling crises and particularly dangerous situations such as serving high-risk arrest and search warrants.

Howell said that his office and the city are close to having a contract worked out to make the drug unit’s cooperation official in writing as well as practice.

“The way drug enforcement is today, it’s critical that you have cities and counties combine,” Ladson said.

Even during the four years there were no police officers assigned to the county unit the agencies did cooperate.

“As the previous lieutenant over the drug unit, I can say we always had a good relationship with city investigations. With the relationship the sheriff and I have working together, that relationship is going to mean a strong bond when it comes to a strong Drug Enforcement Team to serve the citizens of Moultrie and the citizens of the county.”